Top 5 animation containers
- Submitting institution
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Middlesex University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 1443
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- -
- Month
- December
- Year
- 2018
- URL
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http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/31276/
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The output is a 3D Computer animation film, Top 5 Animation Containers (2018), which investigates how YouTube culture disseminates and catalogues pop culture: particularly Youtube channels that debunk or propagate mysteries, urban legends and conspiracy theories. It was initially broadcast on Channel 4 (2018) in Random Acts. Further showings include: Fest Anča, London Intl. Animation Festival, Linoleum Fest and Kaboom! Festival in Amsterdam.
In 2017, Wheele’s early, surrealist, short animations (see Henry Eats, 2003) gained renewed popularity on YouTube, often featured in videos with a ‘…reacts to’ spoken word commentary. YouTubers re-contextualized these older works as ‘mysterious’ or ‘unexplained’ videos. Wheele was particularly interested in the phenomenon of ‘list films’ ranking them in countdowns (e.g. ‘Top 15 Scariest YouTube Videos #4’, 2017). He discovered many similar YouTube channels that catalogue, rank and discuss pop-culture lore in videos; notably WatchMojo, which exclusively produces Top 10/Top 5 ‘Countdown’ videos for online audiences.
Using CGI Animation, Wheele accurately replicated the style of a WatchMojo ‘Countdown’ video using a cast of fictitious or impossible pop-culture characters. This popular YouTube format is thus relocated within a critical arts modality, aligning it with contemporary ‘Post Internet’ artists working critically with CGI animation and digital technologies. His practice of re-assembling detritus from popular culture draws on the persistent legacies of surrealist animation, e.g. Walerian Borowczyk’s ’collage’ based work; ‘found object’ stop motion by Svankmajer; and The Brothers Quay exploration of the subconscious, altering and rearranging familiar cultural artefacts. The methodology of contemporary artist Rachel Maclean, who curated ‘Top 5 Animation Containers’ (Casino Luxembourg 2019), is exemplary here, as are works by Lek, Steyerl and Rafman; and millennial New Media art, e.g. the ambiguity of Parreno’s and Huyghe’s animated character ‘Annlee’ in ‘No Ghost Just a Shell’ (1999).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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